Police radar receivers are devices for receiving and detecting microwave radiation from police radar units and providing an early indication of the presence of such radiation to the operators of motor vehicles on the highways. Such receivers operate better in most situations if mounted high on the vehicle. If mounted within the vehicle, they should be positioned behind the windshield such that their antennas are unobstructed by materials opaque to microwave radiation. Accordingly, it is usually desirable that they be installed within the vehicle, at or above the dashboard level, and high on the windshield or on the automobile visor behind the windshield glass.
For more reliable operation, such receivers should also be maintained in a horizontal orientation with their front ends which contain the antenna structure directed forwardly along the roadway in the direction of travel, and with the opposite end of the receiver containing the controls facing rearwardly with the controls accessible to and in the view of the operator of the vehicle. Radar receivers so positioned are visible from the exterior of the vehicle, and are subject to theft. Accordingly, it is desirable that radar receiver mounts be provided with means for easy removal of the receiver from the vicinity of the automobile windshield so that they can be removed from the vehicle or otherwise concealed when the operator leaves the vehicle.
Removal of the receiver while leaving the bracket in view may still invite a break-in, since thieves know the receiver is often hidden within the vehicle. Therefore, easy removability of the mounting bracket from its point of attachment to the vehicle is also desirable. Where this is done in the prior art, such brackets, unless detached from the receiver also, undesirably increase the bulk of the receiver and render the receiver too awkward for the driver to conveniently carry away.
Brackets have been devised for supporting police radar receivers on the inside surface of an automobile windshield. Passenger automobiles and other such vehicles today, however, are equipped with windshields of varying configurations and slopes. Windshield-mounted brackets for supporting such receivers have in the prior art been equipped with suction cups or other means for adhering brackets to the inside surfaces of windshields. Because of the varying slopes encountered, such brackets are not always suitable or easily adaptable to support a receiver at the desired angle of inclination to the windshield and maintain it in a horizontal or other desirable inclination. Devices of the prior art have been less than fully satisfactory in adapting to varying windshield angles and, to the extent that they have been provided with means for varying the angles of inclination, have been less than fully satisfactory in doing so.